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But we, too, are king when we are moulded to the
Intellectual-Principle.
That correspondence may be brought about in two ways: either the
radii from that centre are traced upon us to be our law or we are
filled full of the Divine Mind, which again may have become to us
a thing seen and felt as a presence.
Hence our self-knowing comes to the knowing of all the rest of
our being in virtue of this thing patently present; or by that
power itself communicating to us its own power of self-knowing;
or by our becoming identical with that principle of knowledge.
Thus the self-knower is a double person: there is the one that
takes cognisance of the principle in virtue of which
understanding occurs in the soul or mind; and there is the
higher, knowing himself by the Intellectual-Principle with which
he becomes identical: this latter knows the self as no longer man
but as a being that has become something other through and
through: he has thrown himself as one thing over into the
superior order, taking with him only that better part of the soul
which alone is winged for the Intellectual Act and gives the man,
once established There, the power to appropriate what he has
seen.
We can scarcely suppose this understanding faculty to be unaware
that it has understanding; that it takes cognisance of things
external; that in its judgements it decides by the rules and
standards within itself held directly from the
Intellectual-Principle; that there is something higher than
itself, something which, moreover, it has no need to seek but
fully possesses. What can we conceive to escape the
self-knowledge of a principle which admittedly knows the place it
holds and the work it has to do? It affirms that it springs from
Intellectual-Principle whose second and image it is, that it
holds all within itself, the universe of things, engraved, so to
say, upon it as all is held There by the eternal engraver. Aware
so far of itself, can it be supposed to halt at that? Are we to
suppose that all we can do is to apply a distinct power of our
nature and come thus to awareness of that Intellectual-Principle
as aware of itself? Or may we not appropriate that principle-
which belongs to us as we to it- and thus attain to awareness, at
once, of it and of ourselves? Yes: this is the necessary way if
we are to experience the self-knowledge vested in the
Intellectual-Principle. And a man becomes Intellectual-Principle
when, ignoring all other phases of his being, he sees through
that only and sees only that and so knows himself by means of the
self- in other words attains the self-knowledge which the
Intellectual-Principle possesses.
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